


do you have room for one more troubled soul

by unwhithered



Category: Leverage
Genre: Affection, F/M, Protective Eliot Spencer, Romantic Fluff, Self-Indulgent
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-13
Updated: 2015-09-15
Packaged: 2018-04-20 13:51:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4789595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unwhithered/pseuds/unwhithered
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The first time Parker kisses Eliot, it’s after a job gone horribly sideways. Her rope had snapped and she had gone plunging out of a third story window with only Eliot to break her fall. Somehow, she had known that he would, but it was a small miracle that they had both walked away with only bruises and sprains instead of broken bones."</p><p>Parker is an adrenaline junkie who wants to take the edge off with sex, and assumes Eliot will have the same reaction. Eliot refuses to take advantage of the situation and tries to calm the wild parts of her instead. To both of their surprise, it works.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I make no apologies for the utterly self indulgent fluff that is the result of finishing my re-watch of Leverage at 5 am, and partially blame this on ambien and cough medicine.

The first time Parker kisses Eliot, it’s after a job gone horribly sideways. Her rope had snapped and she had gone plunging out of a third story window with only Eliot to break her fall. Somehow, she had known that he would, but it was a small miracle that they had both walked away with only bruises and sprains instead of broken bones.

She throws herself into his arms the way that she does sometimes, like after the Hurley job in the psychiatric ward that left her drugged up on anti depressants and a little off kilter for days. He catches her, just as he had done then, just as he did earlier today. Eliot is nothing if not reliable, even at his angriest. This time she takes it a step further, hanging on tight when he tries to put her down and pressing her lips to his. She’s desperate and harsh because that’s the only way she knows how to kiss.

Eliot surprises her by kissing back. Surprises her more when he smoothes one hand down her back and gentles the kiss until he’s licking slowly and deliberately into her mouth. It takes the edge off of her adrenaline rush, leaves her whining softly into his mouth and clinging to his strong shoulders. When he sets her down, she reaches for his zipper, and despite the hard length that she can already feel straining against its denim confines he catches her by the wrist and pulls her away.

“Not tonight,” he murmurs against her lips. 

“But - “ She can feel the adrenaline rush energy still thrumming beneath his skin, see the way that his shoulders are drawn tight and his hands are flexing with the need to do something. She doesn’t see why that thing can't be her. When he cuts her off with a kiss it still feels like rejection.

“Not tonight.” Eliot strokes her back again, runs his other hand through her hair. There’s something soft about his gaze that he has only ever seen him direct at her. “Not like this.” He takes her hand and tugs her toward his bedroom, a room she has never stepped foot in despite how many times she has followed him home after hard jobs, sneaking through the door behind him on silent feet even though she knows it’s almost impossible to hide from him. 

His thumb rubs circles on the back of her hand before he releases it to shrug out of his flannel, kick off his boots and and let his jeans fall to pool around his ankles. Parker doesn’t miss the way he carefully sets both jeans and boots beside his bed, where they’ll be easy to pull on in a hurry if he needs to bolt. Eliot watches knowingly as she does the same, a precaution that the rest of their crew will never understand, then climbs into the double bed and throws back the sheets on the other side in silent invitation. She slides in beside him cautiously, holding herself tensely at the edge of the surprisingly soft mattress - maybe it makes sense that a man who has spent so much time sleeping rough prefers comfort when he can get it.

This isn’t what Parker had wanted or expected when she threw herself at him just inside the door. Adrenaline fueled, hard and desperate, had been what she expected if he didn’t immediately turn her down. Instead she finds Eliot tugging her toward the middle of the bed and curling up around her, his big hand spanning her belly over the tank top she didn’t take off, his chest broad and warm and still covered by an undershirt against her back. His breath is warm on the back of her neck, and her shiver is not one of panic. Surprisingly, she feels none of her usual desire to escape such overwhelming physical affection. Eliot isn’t trapping her here or smothering her with his presence. He’s just...holding on, breathing steadily behind her until she relaxes enough to let their breathing sync and her body melt into his arms.

Neither of them sleep for a long time. Parker doesn’t know if Eliot sleeps at all, actually, though she drifts off sometime after two am and doesn’t wake up again until the sun is slanting through the blinds. Eliot is still behind her, breathing in the same steady pattern. For the first time she remembers, Parker doesn’t want to bolt after waking up with someone at her back. Her heart races, but she doesn’t run.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> unedited, so I apologize for any glaring typos or inconsistencies in tone.

Parker leaves before breakfast, slipping out while he bangs around in the kitchen looking for something to eat. She’s there one minute, perched on the bar looking ruffled and still a little sleepy, then gone the next. Eliot isn’t entirely sure that she left through the door. He shrugs it off and goes back to cracking eggs into a bowl - he didn’t expect her to stick around, is more surprised that she stayed through the night, or even came at all, than anything else.

Eliot doesn’t see Parker until Nate calls them all in for their next job over a week later. That isn’t entirely unusual - sometimes she follows the rest of the crew around like a bored puppy, asking questions and jumping out of nowhere to surprise them and falling asleep on their couches when movie night bores her. Sometimes she goes off the grid entirely. They know - at least, Eliot knows - that she isn’t taking outside jobs anymore, not since the one with Archie, but he thinks that sometimes she breaks into places without stealing anything just to prove she can. Eliot certainly doesn’t take outside jobs anymore. His jobs always involved hurting, and often killing, targets - some of them bad, some of them good, and before he hadn’t cared all that much which was which. Now he only hurts the people that Nate points him at, trusting their mastermind to know right from wrong in a way Eliot’s skewed moral compass never will again.

So it isn’t a surprise that he doesn’t see Parker until she slides in through the window of Nate’s apartment on a Sunday, her hair ruffled and her cheeks pink from the minor effort of climbing the building. She drops into her usual seat beside Eliot, not touching him, not giving any indication that something changed between them ten days ago. She spends the briefing stealing chips from Eliot when he’s not looking and prodding Nate and Hardison with annoying questions, ones that Eliot knows she already has the answers to, then darts away to find the rig that she keeps stashed in Nate’s closet.

This job doesn’t involve jumping off of any buildings, and neither does the next one, so for almost a month it’s business as usual at Leverage, Inc. Eliot starts to wonder if her late night visit had been a mistake and Parker’s awkward flirtation with Hardison is really what she wants. He tells himself it doesn’t make him jealous, even just a little bit - but he’s never been good at lying to himself. He doesn’t bother to lie to himself about the way that he’s...not romancing her, so much as spoiling her, letting her test the food and handing her the first plate at every meal the crew shares, not complaining when she pokes uncomfortably at his bruises or steals his beer, glowering at Nate and Sophie whenever they make a backhanded comment about how she’s a little bit crazy right in fucking front of her.

The next job after that is a heist that gets a little out of hand. Parker dives off a 20th story balcony with a priceless, stolen statue clutched in her arms and shots firing at the place she had been just moments ago. Eliot throws the shooter off of the balcony after her just as the rope goes taught, careful to make sure the body won’t hit her on the way down, and leaves another security guard whimpering on the floor with two broken wrists.

Nobody mentions the body in the street as they rush out of the building dressed as cops and lose themselves in the floods of law enforcement rushing to the scene. Hardison, however, looks a little sick, and can’t quite meet Eliot’s eyes as they climb into Lucille. Eliot is fine with that - he doesn’t need Hardison’s understanding or forgiveness, as long as the geek is safe, and can’t seem to care about much of anything once he spots Parker waiting in the back of the van.

“That was stupid,” he growls.

“That was sloppy,” Nate echoes a moment later.

Parker just grins, holding out the black market artifact that they had been asked to retrieve for its rightful owners. “But it worked!”

-

She swings in through Eliot’s living room window after dark. Nate and Sophie are off returning the artifact to their clients and Hardison, who hadn’t slept for 48 hours straight while figuring out how to hack the building’s security system, is probably still facedown on Nate’s couch where Eliot had left him. Before she even opens her mouth Eliot can feel the restless tension in her that matches his own. A close call like that just scares the rest of the team, but for them...for them the fear and the adrenaline rush of the escape are as heady as any drug. Eliot wonders if Parker, too, needs the rush to cut through the numbness of everyday life. He thinks he knows the answer.

“Eat,” he says, sliding a plate across the kitchen bar to her. He knows that she eats more than sugary cereal and candy and the peanuts from the bar. The rest of the team underestimates her, but Parker isn’t a child, and you can’t maintain a body and a level of athleticism like hers on junk food and soda. Still, she doesn’t have a kitchen in that big creepy warehouse of hers and he thinks she may survive entirely on takeout and premade things she can lift from the supermarket. She should have a home-cooked meal once in awhile - and thinking so doesn’t mean he’s romancing her.

“I knew you wouldn’t let them shoot me,” Parker says halfway through their otherwise silent dinners. 

“Not if I can help it,” he grunts.

“Not ever.” 

Eliot doesn’t reply, doesn’t tell her that’s a promise he can’t make, even though he should. Instead he slides his hand along her thigh under the table and lets her smash her mouth against his. Gentles her wild, needy, biting mouth into something that can actually be called a kiss, and pushes back from the bar so that she can climb right into his lap. When she simultaneously grinds down on his growing erection and pulls at his hair Eliot has to bite back a groan, burying his face in her pale throat and trailing kisses down to her collarbone.

Peeling her out of the black body suit she often wears on jobs takes some work, and Eliot pauses when he sees the bruises underneath. Some of them are old and already familiar to him. Though Eliot and Hardison will pretend to be gentlemen on jobs where Parker is the only one that has to strip down in the elevator, they often all change together in supply closets and filthy bathrooms, dark hallways and the cramped space in the back of Lucille. Eliot has seen more than his fair share of the entire crew, zipping dresses up and helping peel them out of body suits and making sure the bullet proof vests beneath their shirts fit properly. He only lingers on the fresh lines in the shape of the rig that had pulled tight to stop her free fall off the balcony, an irregularly shaped purple spot on her hip that he can only assume happened during her tumble over the railing, and a dark handprint at the base of her neck where he had been too slow to stop a guard from throwing her up against a wall. Particularly the last one, which he soothes with soft kisses that have Parker squirming and whining under his mouth.

Eliot has far more marks on his body than she does. Cuts and bruises, faint scars and huge, nasty ones, some of which he prefers not to think about - reminders of jobs and wars and childhood accidents. They are the reason he usually does this in the dark, but Parker doesn’t give him time to turn off the light before dragging her down with him onto the couch and pulling at him with strong fingers until he shucks off the rest of his clothes.

His boots and hers are neatly arranged at the end of the couch, within easy reach if they need to bolt.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where things get a little explicit.

Parker is all restless energy, rucking Eliot’s shirt up to his armpits before he even finishes peeling her own leggings down her calves. After kicking them aside she tugs until he lifts his arms and lets her pull his shirt off and throw it aside as well. Beneath there are scars - so many scars that she used to stare when they changed together, until Sophie chastised her for being impolite - but Eliot doesn’t give her time to stare tonight. He lets her push down his pants before sliding off of the couch to kneel in front of her with that half smile that he wears sometimes, the one she never quite knows how to interpret. Then again, Parker is crazy - if everyone says so, smart people like Nate and Sophie and Hardison, then it must be true - and she isn’t very good at reading emotions. Though Sophie is trying to teach her, Eliot remains a mystery. Parker isn’t even entirely sure that he wants to be doing this. He did turn her down last time.

Eliot wanted to then, and he wants to now, even knowing that he should probably turn her away again. It would be the right thing to do. She’s not all there, especially not after a con, high on pain and adrenaline and the shock of a near death experience. 

Instead of pulling away he leans in. His mouth is hot on her hip, kissing a trail across her flat belly. Her underwear are practical black shorts and when she wiggles impatiently beneath his mouth he draws them down. Unsurprisingly, her legs are unshaven and covered in soft blonde fluff, and the curls between her legs are trimmed short but not shorn off. When he kisses her hips and thighs and belly she quivers beneath him, grabbing at his hair roughly. Just like always, she doesn’t know how to ask. The idea of asking for what she wants in the bedroom is just as foreign as saying please before she steals from Eliot’s plate or asking Nate’s permission to jump off of a particularly enticing building. She communicates her wants in growls and squirms and tugs at Eliot’s hair until he lets out a growl of his own, the sound vibrating through her and making her belly clench. 

“Let go and hold still,” he orders, softer and quieter than Parker has ever heard his Bossy Voice (always capitalized in her head) before, and to both of their surprise, she does.

It doesn’t last long. As soon as he parts her legs and puts his mouth on her she arches off of the couch, lips parted on a silent gasp. She doesn’t remember the last time someone did this for her - he wonders, as licks between her folds and presses his tongue against her clit, if anyone ever has. He moans louder than she does, reveling in the taste and scent of her cunt and the way that her muscular thighs shake when he draws them over his shoulders.

One of his hands spans her belly, pressing her easily back down into the worn leather couch - a big, calloused hand with scarred knuckles and blunt fingers. Eliot’s hands have wielded guns and knives and implements of torture, beaten countless people, snapped necks. He has used them to kill innocents for money and his own survival. Sometimes he enjoyed it. With all of the blood that stains them, he knows that he doesn’t deserve to touch innocent and beautiful things anymore. Parker isn’t innocent, though, and he works two thick fingers into the slick heat of her body and curves them as the tip of his tongue runs over her clit in hard, rhythmic strokes. It doesn’t take him long to pull her apart like that, not when she was already so worked up when she snuck through his window.

Parker’s orgasm, like everything else about her, is just a little crazy. She grabs at his hair again and grinds too hard against his face and stays completely, unnervingly silent. In Eliot’s opinion, breathing is a little thing to sacrifice in exchange for feeling her clench around his fingers as she pants and shivers. Her legs are still quivering when he pulls back and rubs his face against the inside of her thigh - she jumps at the scratch of his stubble against sensitive skin, then laughs, clear as a bell.

“You’re good at that,” she says when her breathing has evened out again.

“Lots of practice.” He rocks back on his heels and looks up at her. Naked, sweaty, her hair spread in a messy halo on the couch, she’s as motionless as he has ever seen her outside of a heist, except this time she’s relaxed.

“Like learning to pick a lock.” 

Eliot snorts. He doesn’t pretend to understand her, but she draws a smile to his face all the same. “Yeah, sweetheart, somethin’ like that.”

When she slides off of the couch and into his lap he catches her, rocks up against the sudden pressure and heat against his cock. The insides of her thighs are damp and silky smooth and when she rolls her hips he can feel the tip of his cock slipping between her lips. Jesus, he wants to, wants to just grab her slim hips and pull her down until he’s buried in her as deep as he can get. He’s been thinking about what it would feel like to fuck her for a _month_. When she starts sliding her hands down between them he catches her by the wrists anyway.

“Not tonight,” he says, an echo of their encounter a month ago. He doesn’t trust himself - not now, with the day’s violence still buzzing under his skin and the taste of her on his lips. He killed a man for her today, the first one he’s killed since he started working for Nathan Ford. He needs to sit with that for awhile. Get his head straight.

“Why not?” Parker’s clever hands are twisting, looking for a way out of his grip, but he’s stronger than her and the circle of his fingers has no lock for her to pick.

“Because I said so.” Eliot kisses her hair, her temple, the jut of her cheekbone and the mouth she has just opened to argue. Breathes in the scent of sweat clinging to her skin and lets her taste herself on his tongue. Then he rolls to his feet with her still cradled in his arms and pads into the bedroom.


End file.
